In the month of October, a delegation from Sushila Birla Girls’ School visited Birla Balika Vidyapeeth, Pilani with the purpose of reinforcing common traditions and experiencing life in a residential school. The reciprocal visit of the team from Pilani to SBGS took place from 15th to 22nd January 2024 and 14 students and two teachers from BBV Pilani participated in it. The theme of the exchange was ‘Know My State’ and the activities organised by the school included collaborative, multi-disciplinary, intra-class projects and visits to places of historical interest.
39 students and 4 teachers from College Sacré Coeur and Lycée Saint Joseph, Lamballe, the two partner schools in France visited Sushila Birla Girls' School from 12th December to 20th December 2023. Upon their arrival on the 12th, the visitors were accorded a warm welcome both in the school and later at the French Consulate where they were addressed by Didier Talpain, the Consul General, Consulate of France and Frantz Sidi Ami, the Cultural Attaché.
From 13th to 19th December, the guests from France along with their Indian counterparts were taken to various places like St. Paul's Cathedral, Victoria Memorial, Alipore Jail Museum, Princep Ghat and the Indian Museum to explore the rich cultural heritage of the city. They also visited Greenic, a picturesque organic farm at Kalyani where all students were taken on a tour of the farm and learnt about vermicomposting and fishing. Later in the week, they went to Chandannagar and visited the Dupleix Museum, the Institut de Chandannagar; studied the French influence on the architecture of the place and attended a fete at St. Joseph's Convent School.
Apart from the various day outings, the French students, along with their 4 teachers, participated in several in-school activities namely non-flame cooking, Indian tribal mask painting, yoga, quiz on the culture of India and France, local newspaper reading session and learnt Indian traditional songs and dances.
The wonderful cultural exchange between the schools from France and Sushila Birla Girls' School came to an end on the 20th of December with a farewell ceremony in which the French students and their Indian counterparts joined hands to present a fusion of Bengali and French songs, dance to the beats of a Bengali song, revisit the memories of the days spent together through a video presentation and finally participate in a fashion show dressed in ethnic wear. The occasion was graced by Frantz Sidi Ami, the Cultural Attaché, Consulate of France.
It was truly an enriching experience for the Indians and French alike.
Naqiyyah Calcuttawala and Ria Jindal represented the school in the first meeting of Global School Alliance. The Global School Alliance unites passionate educationalists from around the world under the common goal of providing global learning for students by combining online collaboration and immersive experiences. The objective of the meet was to present innovative ideas on controlling plastic pollution.
Khushi Jain and Aashi Bansal of Class IX represented the school in the second meeting of Global School Alliance which took place on 12.01.2023. The meet saw schools from 7 countries presenting their work on the project ‘Economic Champions’ with reference to SDG 4. The students from SBGS spoke at length about the Financial Literacy Programme launched in school for the students of Class IV.
Our school, in collaboration with the Hope Foundation headquartered in Ireland, has had exchange visits of teachers and students with various schools in that country.
A group of 14 students – seven girls from SBGS and seven boys from BHS along with two teachers, visited Cuxhaven in May 2019. They were in Cuxhaven from 3rd May, 2019 to 19th May, 2019. Since 2012, we have been working as partners with Amandeus Abendroth Gymnasium, a secondary school based in Cux Haven (near Hamburg) in Germany and Birla High School. This partnership won the prestigious Robert Bosch grant to work on a project on environment and culture in 2013-14.In 2017, the project on “Sources & Supply” of water to Kolkata and Cuxhaven, was awarded the best International exchange project by the Ministry of Education, Germany. This year too the students are working on the same issue. All the activities conducted in the school in the course of our stay were of special relevance to our project and scientific report. The first of these was a series of presentations that introduced us to the town of Cuxhaven and the disastrous effects of climate change on the town. They started by initiating a discussion on global warming and later moved on to explain how a part of Cuxhaven could be submerged underwater within a period of just 80 years, if the changes were not brought under control. Our students performed experiments based on properties of water and water analysis. After the completion of experiments, the students presented their inference before the entire group. Each presentation was followed by a discussion of the importance of the property of water in the real world. Students also visited The Klimahaus, The Waden Sea and the Water purification plant in Cuxhaven. A comparison between the ecosystems of East Kolkata Wetlands, Kolkata, India and the Wadden Sea, Cuxhaven, Germany was one of the prime focus of the project.
Our school has been in a partnership with Saint Nicholas School in Fleet Hampshire, UK since 2007. This partnership was built after our school won a grant under the Global Schools’ Partnership (GSP) of the British Council. Under the partnership, we have had exchange visits of students and teachers between our schools.
Earlier this year, we started a second partnership with Shakespeare Primary School, Fleetwood, UK.
On the 11th October, 2017, a group of teachers namely Mrs. Sraddha Jain, Mrs. Liptika Mallick Roy from our School; Ms. Indrani Banerjee, and Mr. Ravinder Dhir from Birla High School along with 16 students embarked on a journey to Kunming, No. 8 High School, China as a part of an exchange programme.
Our school is in a partnership with Kunming No. 8 High School since 2014. Under the partnership, we had a recent visit of students and teachers in May 2016.
Kunming No. 8 High School has been our partner school in China since 2014. As part of our partnership arrangements, we have regular teacher and student exchanges.
